WoW Weekly: Farewell to Ulduar

WoW Weekly is a biweekly-ish, self-absorbed look into the things I've been doing -- or not doing -- in the game. From auctioneering and pet battling to mount farming and raiding.

It happened the day after my birthday; granted, the fact the Warcraft movie released on my birthday was quite the present, but I was happy to accept Mimiron's Head as a belated gift from the World of Warcraft. The second of six characters scheduled for the week saw it drop. Altogether, I killed Yogg Saron 249 times before the mount drop, with kill number 250 being the lucky one. However, I'm told that isn't so lucky.

With the robot head added to the collection, I have all of the rare pre-Cataclysm mounts. After a couple of years of farming Ulduar, it was time to bid farewell and set my sights on a new goal. Ideally, it'd be something pre-MoP so that my stable of characters could attempt the run each week instead of just my strongest character. Instead, I figured I'd head back to Pandaria on my main character to see what sorts of trouble the world bosses and those found on the Isle of Thunder would pose. Besides, I'm still after one of the mounts dropped by the Zandalari Warbringers.

Galleon and Nalak fell with ease, but I could not dispatch the Sha of Anger quickly enough, meaning when the mind control portion of the fight came, the fight would reset itself. I know it's possible to solo the Sha of Anger, but it may still require a certain class to do so. I made a mental note to revisit the Sha once I've leveled a bit in Legion.

While heading to Nalak, I recalled the two mounts that drop in the Throne of Thunder, one from Horridon and one from Ji'kun. I was pretty confident I could at least make it through Horridon with my main character (around 730 ilvl) on 10-player mode. And I was right. But there was a rather astonishing aspect to the feat: Horridon dropped the mount!

Now on a high from seeing a super rare and then a rare mount drop within an hour's time, I decided to get the hell out of the Throne of Thunder for the time being, vowing to return once I had a stable of characters to run through each week. I'm hoping the lockout-sharing trick continues to work in Legion. I opened up my collections pane and navigated to the mounts tab; filtered for "not collected" and "drops". And I saw a mount I swear I'd acquired years ago: Flametalon of Alysrazor. Hrmph.

So I'll set the hearthstones of seven characters to Aviana's Shrine and return each week until Alysrazor coughs up the mount. Other updates include:

Swimming in it: Account-wide gold count has eclipsed 1.3 million. The economy for crafted armor/weapons continues to slide. The gem market ebbs and flows, but is on a downward trend. Potion and flasks seem to be selling rather quickly, but for a fraction of the price they sold at months ago. Now that we know the lucrative nature of garrisons will be removed in the Legion pre-patch, which folks are speculating to arrive mid-July, I'm planning to squeeze every last coin from my garrisons while still possible.

Guild Raids: Refusing to die under the weight of this crippling content lull, the guild continues to raid on Thursday evenings. I'd taken a couple of months off in the early spring, but they forged ahead. When I left, we had two bosses down in Mythic. By the time I returned, they were working on their 5th kill. Sadly, interest began to drop at this point and we regularly find ourselves unable to field a viable group to continue progress. Regardless, we've kept the raid alive by revisiting previous tier Mythics, running guild achievements, and helping friends get their moose mounts.

Guild Meetup: I'm stoked to attend the 2nd Annual Sapere Aude Guild Meetup next weekend. Some of you may remember we held our first meetup last year in upstate New York, and it was a blast. This year, we're moving across the country to Colorado in order to make it easier on some of our west coast folks.

Legacy Raid Mount Farming: Clear Once and Never Again

A while back, I was informed via Twitter that it was possible to share legacy raid lockouts between characters on the same account. At first, I was perplexed. With the way shared raid lockouts work, you would need to have one character on your account invite another character from that account to a party. Meaning, you'd have to have two characters of the same license online at the same time.

Enter the Group Finder.

Because of how the Group Finder works (and whose inner workings I profess to know nothing about), players can invite their alts to parties they've created with a little bit of work. It's not exactly straightforward, and it might annoy your guildies if you're farming with multiple characters due to the logon/logoff spam (which you'll understand shortly), but it translates to a significant amount of time saved each week. This, of course, assuming you are running this content with multiple characters.

We'll use the Lich King 25-H as an example---these steps must be followed exactly.

1. First, you'll need the lockout. Clear ICC through Sindragosa with any character---I chose a lower level toon who could handle 10-N but couldn't actually kill the Lich King on 25-H without assistance. I'll explain why shortly. Notably, the lockout can be secured on either difficulty mode at either raid size. 25 will afford more rewards in terms of take-home gold, while 10 while take slightly less time to clear.  

2. Start a Legacy content group with your lockout character in the Group Finder for Ice Crown Citadel - 25H. Name this group whatever you'd like---I generally go with "Private," though that won't prevent you from receiving random invite requests. Once the group is listed, log out of the game and onto an alt you'd like to share the lockout with. 

3. Now on the second character, open the Group Finder and search Legacy groups. The group started by your first character will be right at the top of the list, as it takes a few minutes for the group to be removed from the system after the group leader goes offline. Request an invite, log out of the game and back in with the lockout character.

4. Once back on the lockout character you will hear that familiar ping indicating you have an invite request. Now who could that be? Invite your alt, immediate log out and back onto your alt. 

5. Upon logging in with the alt, you will receive a group invite. Accept the invite and wait a minute or two for the game to pass you Group Leader. Once this happens, reset all instances and set Raid Difficulty to 25-N. Enter Ice Crown Citadel---you'll get a warning that 10/12 bosses have been defeated (or 11/12 if you did the Valithra encounter). Now inside, set the Raid Difficulty to Heroic and voila! Head on up to the Lich King. Killing the Lich King will not affect the lockout of the character who initially cleared the instance.

6. For multiple alts, log on to the next alt and go back to step 3!

Now, to preserve the lockout week to week, simply never defeat the target boss with the original character who got the lockout. After server reset, simply toggle the Raid Info tab in-game on that character, select your Ice Crown Citadel lockout, and click Extend. I currently have four level 100 characters that I try to run through each week. To secure the initial lockout, I used a level 87 Death Knight on 10-N mode and now share her lockout with alts each week. 

This method should work for any legacy content you'd like to farm---Ulduar, Mogu'shan Vaults, Firelands and the like---happy hunting!

Thanks to @Shapingus for this tip!